Get Ready for an Avalanche of Election-Year Spam

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And you thought all those flyers were bad. According to MailFrontier, makers of e-mail security products that block spam, viruses, and other message-based attacks, more than 1.25 billion political spam messages will reach registered voters before the Nov. 2 elections. Over the past 90 days, the company has seen a 50 percent increase in political spam. It anticipates even greater increases in the 60 days leading up to Election Day.

"About one percent of the spam messages we're seeing are political," says Anne Bonaparte, MailFrontier president and CEO. And that's saying a lot, considering that spam now accounts for nearly three-quarters of all Internet e-mail traffic.

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What sort of political messages is MailFrontier seeing? According to Bonaparte, 70 percent of the messages are political polls. "They're very simplistic ways of capturing quick information," she says. "There will be a picture of Kerry and a picture of Bush, and it will say 'Who do you think is better at fighting terrorism?' or 'Who do you think is going to win?'" But some are a bit more sophisticated. "They look like actual Harris polls. One takes seven minutes to complete."

Roughly 20 percent promote some sort of political cause, and ten percent are fundraising e-mails. "These are the scariest ones. Though we haven't seen it yet, this could open up a whole new avenue for e-mail fraud."

So are these messages being sent by the official campaign offices? No. They seem to be coming from small, independent advocacy groups. "This is not Kerry and Bush spamming," says Bonaparte. "But it's not fraudulent spammers either. They don't make any effort to hide their addresses."